Posted
by
samzenpus
on Wednesday July 14, 2010 @07:04PM
from the patch-often dept.

adeelarshad82 writes "At TED Global in Oxford, Microsoft released a video showing off its 'virtual human' technology, named Milo, designed for the company's hands-free Xbox 360 motion controller called Kinect. Milo is built to react to people's emotions, body movements, and voice, allowing players to interact with the virtual character. It was built using artificial intelligence developed by Lionhead studios, along with undisclosed technology from Microsoft. According to games designer Peter Molyneux, the game exploits psychological techniques to make a person feel that Milo is real. Each Milo character will be unique because every player's interaction with the virtual character will sculpt the type of virtual person Milo will evolve to become."

You know, I still think Gates owes all of us that was stuck with that turkey an apology and a copy of XP Home. Where is my apology you rich bastard!!! Just as I think the Ballmer monkey should do the right thing and say he was sorry for Vista and give those stuck with that loser at least Windows 7 Starter just to say he was sorry. WHERE IS MY APOLOGY YOU FAT BASTARD! And WTF is it with/. and the Gates borg? The man hasn't been head of the company in years. Shouldn't they switch to a chair throwing Ballmer Monkey by now?

As for TFA, I can see some real world applications for this tech. Imagine a virtual teacher with infinite patience for those with learning disabilities. you could use this tech to tailor a learning plan for the individual without the incredibly high cost of private tutors. Done right I could see this really helping kids.

The truth of the matter is; although we're just watching a video. Personally, I'd prefer to go down to the park, river or sea and go fishing; interacting with a real person rather than a fantasy boy.

I was born at the start of the 1980s. I got my first computer (Commodore 64) for my 7th birthday. I've spend a lot of my life in front of a screen, growing up with video games as a pastime, then working in computer troubleshooting and website design.

Maybe he needs to leverage some of the plugins that aren't currently available on other browsers, or maybe he needs to be reasonably sure his browser will be supported and the only way to do that and not support IE is to support the next biggest desktop browser by user volume. The likes of Chrome and Safari might be better, but that still doesn't mean they're the right choice for everyone just yet (for me the tools I need for web development are far better in FF right now, for instance - other browsers can

Let's see... what kind of horrible things to people do to Sims? Put them in a house with no toilet? Strand them in pool without a ladder? etc... I shudder at the abuse we'll see attempted and if this thing learns from it's interactions. Ick.

Let's see... what kind of horrible things to people do to Sims? Put them in a house with no toilet? Strand them in pool without a ladder? etc... I shudder at the abuse we'll see attempted and if this thing learns from it's interactions. Ick.

That demo looks cooked. Microsoft couldn't get basic speech to text to work reliably, they'll need to work harder to convince people that are sitting on a working AI that'll also interact freely with people as was demoed.

Also, I almost can imagine you eating delicious tortured and slaughtered animal stake while you were writing about the human rights of basic software programs.

Not to mention that he looks AT her which means she would have seen him looking off to the right just as we do. That is unless that TV was actually a hologram. Wow. Microsoft really is ahead of the game!!

Keep in mind that the video in the article is over a year old (E3 2009). Presumably, the demo that happened at TED this year was more sophisticated - it's unfortunate that there doesn't seem to be video of that yet.

For what it's worth, the issues with Vista's STT demonstration were explained [msdn.com] pretty soon after the incident. Given the nature of the problems, most people at the time anticipated a training/hardware issue. Of course, that doesn't change how funny it was:)

As it happens, Vista and Win7's voice recognition is actually pretty good for software bundled with the OS.

Peter Molyneux is known for empty promises because he makes features up as he talks about them. When he tells you about this great new feature in the game chance is that's the first time the development team hears of it.

I remember chatting a few years ago with jabberwacky [jabberwacky.com] (which basically is "just" what people have been feeding into it for decades) and being unsettled by how cruel and outright evil it seemed... then I realized, oh, this is how (some) people treat a bot: cruel and condescending.

I see absolutely no point in this... we need to interact with people, not establish a feedback loop and surround our selves with virtual bullshit...

Honestly, I don't know whether this is the Uncanny Valley manifesting, but that kid just creeps me out.

That's not the Uncanny Valley causing it. It's your basic animal fear that your own species has just been made obsolete by some basic gaming software.

But I might be wrong. You can test it. Get the DVD of Pixar's "The Incredibles" and play some. Do you feel the impending doom, or you're entertained? If the former, it's the Uncanny Valley (also check that with your doctor).

As for the fear-inducing-AI in the demo: it's fake, so you'll be able to sleep well tonight.

Godwin's law doesn't state that Nazis can't be brought up, it just states that they will be brought up eventually. Without any judgement on that, either, the whole "if you bring up the Nazis you lost the argument" bullshit is made up and can be cured with a simple use of google, instead of just reurgitating it ad nauseum.... from wikipedia.

The rule does not make any statement about whether any particular reference or comparison to Adolf Hitler or the Nazis might be appropriate, but only asserts that the lik

Did the Sims miss the point entirely? I would think the popularity of a game built on sentient somewhat realistic characters would prove otherwise. All he is, is a 3D chat bot that reacts to you physically instead of what you type. I'd hardly call it a video game, personally.

Can you imagine being the poor bastard at Lionhead responsible for making sure that these "virtual humans" can exhibit realistic suffering responses to griefers, gropers, and every other ghastly atavism that the Kinect users of the world will allow to roam free when they know that there are no rules and no consequences?

(Incidentally, I bloody well hope that Lionhead has had some time to learn a thing or two since Black & White. The "AI" in that game managed to suck every ounce of joy out of being a malevolent deity, something that I wouldn't have believed possible.)

What are you talking about. The AI was awesome. Once I started rewarding my ape for Lighting its shit on fire, and also rewarding it for throwing its shit at villagers, it put 1+1 together and innovated unholy projectile flame turds.

I only wish my horse on red read redemption would come up with that instead of "jumping of cliffs and dying":(

No matter how many times I tried to teach my creature how to inspire belief through classic "good cop/bad cop" techniques, he never learned how to set the villages children on fire, throw their burning bodies at the village, setting it on fire, and then put out the fire with magical rain.(since the villager AI model rewarded you with more belief for giving them things that they needed, you could get more belief per unit manna by hurting them, and then magically repairing some of the dam

You don't understand - virtual humans can be tailored to your every need... in this case Microsoft is hemorrhaging customers - this way they can create their own who wont depart the sinking ship.... billions and billions of virtual customers running in spare cycles on the cloud, very very cheap, and they never report bugs....

Might the news be that Molyneux is finally planning to flesh out Milo into a game? "He also said the technology is still in development and Microsoft has no plans to release it, but hinted that the game was designed to be used for millions of people and therefore could one day become a commercial product."

I love the detective work on detecting the subtle visual clues that it's fake.

I guess Microsoft (or anyone in the world at all) having casually developed this AI, speech recognition and a virtually flawless speech synth, solely for the purpose of making a casual role-playing console game, doesn't seem suspicious to anyone.

I guess the key phrase for me here is "built using artificial intelligence developed by Lionhead studios." Frankly, after seeing the shift that Lionhead produced with Black & White, compared to all the hype of what the game was supposed to be, ie major breakthrough in AI, I've just come to dismiss anything coming from Lionhead as just a bunch of marketing BS.

Thanks for the link to the video, it's quick and points out obvious flaws. I suppose at least this time Microsoft wasn't under oath when they pr

Some of it was seriously cheesy, but some of it was amazing ideas (most revolve around extra interactivity possible with a virtual world when you add a camera to the mix). Amazing ideas from Microsoft?! Some other company than Microsoft is likely going to really make something really interesting with this stuff.

If you're curious about the Bucket that The Archon V2.0 was referring to, it's a chatbot [encycloped...matica.com] that spouts nothing but 4chan memes after talking to almost nobody but 4chan users. But as I understand it, if you teach your copy of Milo all 4chan's memes, someone else's copy of Milo won't necessarily learn them.

Peter Molyneux has ceased to be taken seriously by most people when it comes to his rather crappy games - perhaps he has realized he has nothing to lose and has decided its time to engage in outright deception.

1) Is it important to you how Milo reacts? Why is it important to you?
2) Why do you say drink beer in Milo's presence? Can you elaborate on that?
3) Does mess with Milo's logic bother you?
4) Why do you feel Microsoft is evil? Can you elaborate on that?
5) You are being a bit negative.
6) Can you elaborate on a pirated version?
7) You are being a bit negative.

People might think it's funny when their AI friend has a funny accent, but it's cheaper to outsource these things to India! I assure you people will be amazed and perplexed by how wonderful this AI is, but maybe curious why it has an hourly cost....

BRYANTMr. Dyson? The material teams wants to run another test on the uh... on it.DYSONYup. Come on. I'll get it.Dyson produces an unusual-looking KEY from his pocket as they stride through the lab. Bryant has to hustle to keep up.BRYANTListen, Mr. Dyson,

He's famous for his grand claims. Edge Magazine, a UK mature gaming magazine, use to do couple of pages with the man in them every so often. And I remember how he fabled up Fable 1 into grand momentous game that would revolutionize Action RPG's yet failed to impress anyone. Likewise with the game Black & White that supposed to push new heights for the god genre.

Yeah, he's a schmuck and all of his games are, at heart, reworkings of the tedium that was Populous. Every know and then people make great claims for the realism, or open endedness of their games, but the only games which are like this are multiplayer games, where other humans genuinely act differently/unpredictably - either that or they're just better than you so it's up to the engine to find servers where people are about as good as you (as quakelive, for instance, does).

the only games which are like this are multiplayer games, where other humans genuinely act differently/unpredictably

Only if you define "acting differently" as "reading game guides to find the cheapest tactic available, then spamming that over and over again till the next patch, then whining that it was nerfed". That's not exactly what I'd call unpredictable, but YMMV.

Black & White did have some nice technology: the graphics. I loved the way you could zoom smoothly all the way from basically the outer atmosphere right down to the point where you were watching individual people doing stuff -- even on a relatively modest graphics card. That was a very good engine for the time.

Shame the supposedly revolutionary AI training turned out to be an exercise in frustration, and the rest of the gameplay was nothing but tedious micromanagement. Unless you wanted to be evil..

I didn't get far enough into B&W to really see anything interesting. I just remember struggling with the "innovative" and "intuitive" control system and thinking it was actually just "fiddly" and "incredibly frustrating". I remember trying to get a peon to go up a mountain to do... something or other at the beginning of the game, and failing for some arbitrary reason and being forced to do the whole thing again right from the beginning. As usual, big promises with some serious flaws in implementation. I

A few years ago there were these 'gigapet' things that were all the hype, I had about 2, they were fantastic 'pets'. Then they suddenly went out of style.

Tiger's Giga Pets were a me-too of Bandai's Tamagotchi. Digimon began [wikipedia.org] as Bandai's attempt to extend Tamagotchi into the boy's market; it exists today as the dueling TV and game franchise [tvtropes.org] of Nintendo's Pokemon.

With today's technology I bet you could have a fantastic new 'gigapet' that would be every bit as realistic as a real duck/cat/dog/animal X.

so instead of studying actual humans, we try to make something just as complex as them, that behaves identically, and then study that? even if it WAS possible, it seems like a gigantic waste of time to me. also: to make something that behaves like humans we'd have to understand ourselves/each other first....